We use cookies to ensure we give you the best experience on our website. You can find out about our cookies and how to disable cookies in our Privacy Policy. If you continue to use this website without disabling cookies, we will assume you are happy to receive them. Close.

The term ‘energy storage’ encompasses a wide range of technologies with diverse capabilities.

Available storage options span the two dimensions of power rating and discharge duration. Low power rating and short discharge duration options such as super-capacitors and batteries are better suited to provision of services to distribution network operators and end-users, while high power rating and long discharge duration, such as pumped storage hydro, are well suited to providing energymanagement and balancing services to transmission system operators.

Pumped water storage is well established, and accounts for the great majority of schemes, however, it is relatively inefficient as it involves converting electricity into kinetic energy, then to potential energy and then back into electricity. It generally requires hilly terrain, although low-lying Denmark has pioneered the reverse concept of a 'green power island', where sea water is pumped out of areas and then let back in through power generating turbines.

Technologies for ice and heat storage already exist but further improvement can be made to increase efficiency and investigations are on-going on phase change materials (PCM). Further deployment should be achieved in smart cities and building applications, such as centralised air-con systems incorporating ice storage; CHPplant equipped with heat storage; or thermal storage in renewable systems.

It still early to predict when this will become a commercially viable solution. Current R&D is on improving efficiency at high temperature and reduced cost.

Much work is going into developing more affordable, large-scale and reliable storage systems, most obviously batteries, including those for domestic energy storage from home photovoltaic (PV) systems, and from electric vehicle batteries (smart cars) to feed power back into the grid at times of peak demand.

A study for the Australian Renewable EnergyAgency in July 2015 found: “The potential for significant cost reduction of some battery technologies provides real opportunity for significant deployment in multiple applications. In particular, Li-ion batteries prices are expected to reduce by over 60% and flow battery prices by over 40% by 2020.”

Various sources put the value of this market at between $16-21 bn by 2020 and reaching in excess of $60 bn by 2030. Of global installed capacity, the Americas accounts for just under 1/2, APAC for 1/3 and EMEA 1/4.

Ongoing challenges include poor understanding and undervaluation by stakeholders, however, regulatory reforms and technological advances are expected to help bring commercial and industrial energy storage into the mainstream.

The criteria for spotting the higher potential energy storage markets include countries; where renewable integration is very high and which wish to avoid curtailment and intermittency; or in which there is an open energy market which can provide attractive return on investment; those in which there is a shortage at times of peak demand and shortage of energy; and locations which are lacking demand side management.

This article was originally published by BSRIA in October 2016. It was written by Jeremy Towler, Senior Manager - Energy & Smart Technologies, BSRIA Worldwide Market Intelligence.